Along for the Ride
Jamie Stansfield was not born a psychic. She had no telepathic experiences either as a child or as a young adult. In fact, it was not until she sustained a head wound during a biking accident at age twenty-eight and spent three days in a coma that her unique abilities surfaced.
Her first excursion into the world of the paranormal was an unusual one, indeed. Jamie and her former college roommate, Ilsa Lindstrom, were sightseeing in New York City seven months after she recovered from her injuries when Ilsa decided to tour a Victorian mansion on nearby Long Island, notorious for being the sight of a double homicide.
"Back in the 1890s," Ilsa explained, "wealthy industrialist Alexander Rivington, the owner of the house, and his wife were butchered with a hatchet inside the house. Suspicion fell on the elderly couple's son who stood to inherit his father's vast fortune. After a sensational trial, the son was found guilty and sent to Sing Sing where he was later electrocuted in Old Sparky."
"I can't imagine why you would want to go into this house, knowing its history," Jamie said, standing on the cracked sidewalk outside the infamous Rivington Murder Mansion and staring up at its imposing façade.
"Because I'm curious. I've read so much about the crime and the trial that I want to see the place for myself."
Jamie reluctantly agreed to accompany her friend on the guided tour, despite her personal misgivings.
"If you wanted to visit a gruesome crime scene, we could have just driven down to Fall River and gone to the Lizzie Borden house."
"I've already been there," Ilsa confessed with a mischievous smile. "Besides, there's so much to do in New York, and I want to experience as much of it as possible."
Jamie, who kept a running total of her expenditures in her head, saw the numbers whizzing by like the meter on a gasoline pump. This week-long trip to the Big Apple would no doubt strike a mortal blow to her Visa card balance.
Just as Jamie was considering saving $12.50 by foregoing the morbid tour of the Rivington Murder Mansion, the front door of the house opened, and the tour guide, dressed in proper Victorian butler's attire, invited the two young women inside. Several tourists were already waiting in the mansion lobby for the start of the presentation.
Ilsa was speculating on their chances of being able to get tickets for a matinee performance of Wicked when suddenly Jamie's ears began to ring. Moments later her head started to spin, and she felt as though she was about to pass out. It was a feeling she'd had once before when she let herself get dehydrated on an unusually hot summer day. But with the temperature a mild seventy-two degrees, Jamie was certainly not suffering from the heat.
She closed her eyes and put her hand to her head, praying she wouldn't be sick. Thankfully, the dizziness passed as suddenly as it had started, and the ringing in her ears abruptly stopped. When Jamie opened her eyes again, she saw that she was alone in the mansion.
"Ilsa," she called, but her voice echoed in the empty house.
So much had changed in the brief moment her eyes were closed that Jamie had difficulty taking everything in at once. She looked around and made a mental list, beginning with her clothing. The jeans and Red Sox T-shirt were gone, and she was wearing a long, full charcoal gray skirt; a high-neck, long-sleeve white blouse; and a housekeeper's apron. Her comfortable Reeboks had been replaced with high, buttoned shoes.
The foyer of the house had also undergone a drastic transformation, from the rugs on the hardwood floor to the paper on the walls and the drapes on the windows. Where the tour guide's sales counter and cash register had previously stood there was now a mahogany lowboy on which several visitors had left their formal calling cards.
"What the hell has happened to me?" Jamie cried in dismay. "Am I dreaming? If so, why does this all seem so real?"
"Lucia," someone called from one of the upstairs rooms.
Jamie turned at the sound of the woman's voice and felt a stab of pain in her abdomen. She was wearing a corset, she realized. What a horrible contraption! How did women manage to breathe in those things?
"Lucia!" the woman repeated impatiently. "I want my tea now."
Without any conscious intent, Jamie began walking upstairs, feeling the pinch of the corset with each step she took. At the second floor landing, she turned right and headed down the dimly lit hallway to a partially open bedroom door.
"Don't dawdle, girl!" an elderly, bedridden woman ordered sharply.
She looked at Jamie and apparently recognized her as Lucia Fusco.
"Well? Where's my tea, you dolt? Don't tell me you've forgotten it. I declare, Lucia, as a lady's maid you are quite useless! I intend to speak to my husband when he comes home from the City. With all the boatloads of immigrants flocking to New York every day, I don't imagine it will be too difficult to find someone with a modicum of intelligence. So don't be surprised if you find yourself out on the street come tomorrow."
Jamie could feel anger boiling inside of her, a sensation that was far more unpleasant than the pinch of the corset.
"I'll go down and get your tea right now, Ma'am," she said in an Italian accent.
The voice was not her own nor was the decision to go to the kitchen and make a cup of tea for the bedridden harpy. It was as though someone else was controlling her body, and she was just going along for the ride.
Jamie walked down the stairs, wincing at her discomfort and wishing she was wearing her own loose-fitting clothing. She went to the kitchen in the back of the house and brewed a pot of tea for the woman who apparently was Lucia's employer. As she placed the teapot and a clean cup and saucer on a serving tray, she saw a small hatchet lying next to the stove, one used to chop pieces of firewood for kindling.
It was as though years of humiliation, degradation and abuse swelled up inside her, coalescing into one burning desire for revenge. As hard as she tried, Jamie was unable to stop Lucia Fusco from putting down the tea tray, picking up the hatchet and heading for the stairs.
* * *
"Jamie!"
The sound of her own name penetrated the hatred and urge to kill. A sound slap across her face brought her more than a century forward in time to the modern day Rivington Murder Mansion, to her comfortable jeans and Red Sox T-shirt and to her favorite pair of Reeboks.
"What happened?" she asked, looking up at the worried faces of Ilsa, the tour guide and her fellow tourists.
"You had some kind of seizure," Ilsa replied, her voice still showing signs of concern.
The sound of the approaching siren announced the arrival of the ambulance.
"This really isn't necessary," Jamie protested as the emergency medical technicians picked her up and placed her on a gurney.
In the hospital emergency room, she was subjected to a battery of tests, none of which revealed anything out of the ordinary.
"You say you had a nightmare while you were unconscious?" Ilsa asked when she visited her friend in the hospital the following day.
"Yes. It was a real doozy, too! I dreamed I was a young maid in the Rivington house, that I'd gotten angry at my employer and was about to kill her with a hatchet."
"A maid? How odd. The Rivingtons' maid went back to Italy right after the murders. It has since made several people wonder whether Lucia Fusco knew something that ...."
Ilsa stopped speaking when she saw the color drain from Jamie's face.
"Are you all right? You're not having another seizure, are you?"
"What was the name you just said?"
"Lucia Fusco. She was the maid who worked for the Rivingtons. A number of true crime writers have theorized that she knew a good deal more about the murders than she'd let on and that Algernon Rivington paid her handsomely and sent her back home so that she couldn't testify against him."
"You know a lot about the murders, don't you?" Jamie asked.
"I've read several books on the subject."
"Was the murdered woman an invalid?"
"Yes, she had polio several years before she was killed. Why?"
Jamie described in detail the strange dream she'd had after she passed out in the lobby of the Rivington mansion.
"That's incredible!" Ilsa exclaimed. "Are you sure it was a dream you had? It sounds more like a psychic vision."
"You know I don't believe in all that supernatural nonsense."
"No? Then how did you know about the maid or about the old lady being bedridden?"
* * *
On the drive back to Puritan Falls, Ilsa stopped in front of a Connecticut home where a husband had supposedly killed his wife and two children. While seated in the car in front of the house, Jamie had another dream-like experience in which she saw the man come home from work and, after eating dinner, get his shotgun out of the closet and shoot his wife and kids.
"I must be psychic," Jamie concluded. "What are the odds that it was nothing but a dream on both occasions?"
"Do you know what this means?" Ilsa asked with awe.
"That I should change my name to Miss Cleo and open a psychic hotline?"
"No. It means Algernon Rivington was executed for a crime he didn't commit."
"That's right. If my vision is to be accepted as truth, then Lucia Fusco killed Mrs. Rivington, and more than likely she killed the old woman's husband as well."
"It's a shame that we can't do anything about clearing Algernon's name—not that it would make much of a difference to him now. After all, the poor guy has been dead for more than a century. Besides, if you went public with your story, people would probably think you're a quack like all those crazy people who claim to have seen Big Foot or to have been abducted by aliens."
Jamie remained silent as the two women made their way north through Rhode Island and into Massachusetts.
When they stopped for gas at a service center, Ilsa said, "You've been awfully quiet. I've done all the talking since we left Connecticut. Are you feeling okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I've just been thinking. Maybe I've been given this second sight for a reason. I can't do anything to right the injustice done in the Algernon Rivington case, but maybe I can prevent some other innocent person from being executed or from spending a lifetime in prison."
"What are you going to do, become a police officer?"
"No, I'll just offer my services when I learn of a major crime or disappearance. Psychics do that quite a bit. I'm sure I won't be able to solve all the cases I take on, and I fully expect to encounter a lot of skepticism and ridicule, but if I can save one person from suffering Algernon Rivington's fate, it will be well worth it."
* * *
Word of Jamie Stansfield's successful journeys into the paranormal world spread rapidly. Police departments often called her in when faced with seemingly unsolvable cases. Thanks to Jamie's compassion, dedication and psychic abilities, more than one innocent suspect was cleared of a crime he didn't commit, and six murderers were brought to justice.
The most satisfying service she performed, however, was in locating missing persons. At least twice a week a frantic man or woman appeared on her doorstep, desperately searching for a child, spouse, parent or sibling. In many instances, the missing person was dead, and Jamie had to crush the hopes and break the hearts of the family members involved. But, thankfully, there were also times when she was able to locate a loved one who was still alive.
Then one day a middle-aged black man came to see her. Dwight Mitchum seemed hesitant at first to speak of the mission that had brought him from Chicago half-way across the country to the small Massachusetts village of Puritan Falls.
"Are you trying to locate a missing loved one?" Jamie asked gently.
The man nodded his head, fidgeting with the hat he held in his hand.
"Is it your wife? Your child?"
"My mother."
"When did you last see her?"
The man hung his head, not wanting to look Jamie in the eye.
"I haven't seen her since 1972. You see, I ran away from home when I was a kid. My father beat us, and I just couldn't take any more."
Jamie nodded sympathetically.
"I recently went back to Los Angeles, to the old neighborhood, to look for her. But things have changed so much; I couldn't find anyone who knew my mother."
"Did you try the police?"
"They weren't much help."
"I'll see what I can do. Did you bring any personal items that belonged to your mother?"
"No, I didn't take anything with me when I left home except for the clothes on my back. But I have an old picture of her, will that help?"
"It might."
The man reached into his pocket and from his wallet extracted a well-worn photograph. Jamie held it tightly in her right hand. Usually, when she held something that belonged to a person she could make a strong, clear connection with the owner. With the photograph, however, she could only glimpse brief, random images.
"Your mother was a religious woman," Jamie declared.
Dwight nodded.
"Yes, she was."
"She was very active in her church and in her community."
"What I remember most about my mother was that she was a frightened, abused wife. I'm glad she was able to get past all that. What can you tell me about where she might be now?"
"I see that she moved from California, that she lived in a small house—a cabin of some sort. But I don't know where it is."
Jamie tried for several more minutes to track Mabel Mitchum, but her efforts only resulted in a throbbing headache.
"I'm sorry," she apologized, "but I'll need something that belonged to her to get more detailed information."
Dwight thanked Jamie for her help and offered to pay her for her time, but the psychic firmly refused.
"I don't do this for money," she assured him. "My only motivation is to help people whenever I can."
* * *
Three months later Dwight Mitchum returned to Jamie's house.
"I was able to locate an old friend of my mother's in L.A. She didn't know where my mother was or what she's been doing the past thirty years, but she did have this."
Dwight reached into his pocket and took out an inexpensive necklace.
"That belonged to your mother?"
"Yes. Her friend borrowed it and never had the chance to return it."
"I usually get a more vivid reading when the person recently handled the object, but I'll do my best."
Jamie closed her eyes and gripped the necklace in both hands. As she had on several previous occasions, she became one with the missing woman and saw past events through Mabel Mitchum's eyes, an experience she called "going along for the ride."
As Dwight watched closely, the psychic seemed to enter a trance-like state and become oblivious to everything around her.
"Miss Stansfield?" Dwight asked with concern.
But the psychic couldn't hear him. She had journeyed beyond her own time and space.
* * *
Jamie found herself in a large kitchen, the type more commonly found in an institution rather than a restaurant.
"Mabel!" a middle-aged, careworn Hispanic woman called excitedly. "Father wants us all to come to the pavilion—now!"
Mable stopped cooking and followed the Hispanic woman outside where the temperature was even hotter than inside the kitchen.
Where am I? Jamie wondered.
It looked like a farm, but one surrounded by dense tropical trees—a clearing in a jungle.
As Mable neared the pavilion, Jamie spied hundreds of people gathering around Father, who was entreating his followers to kill themselves. Jamie's heart seemed to jump to her throat. "Father" was none other than the Reverend Jim Jones, and she was in the Jonestown settlement in Guyana.
"Step over quietly," Jones urged, "because we are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act. We can't go back. They won't leave us alone."
Jones's cohorts were passing out paper cups of grape Flavor Aid doctored with cyanide. Many men, women and even children were obediently drinking the poisoned beverage, but others were not willing to die just because Father had decreed it. These reluctant souls were given lethal injections. All around Jamie, people were dying. She wanted to flee, to run into the jungle and escape the carnage of Jonestown. Unfortunately, Mabel was a loyal follower who would do anything Jones asked of her, even kill herself.
Something was wrong. The psychic connection should have broken by now, and Jamie should have returned to her own body—but she hadn't. She felt Mabel's hand reach out for the paper cup.
"No, don't!" Jamie's mind screamed.
But Mabel's actions were predetermined. After all, these were the events of November 1978. Nothing or no one could change them now. As Mabel raised the paper cup to her lips, Jamie desperately fought to wake up in her own time, in her own home.
The black woman drank and swallowed. Beneath the sweet, fruity taste of the Flavor Aid was the bitter aftertaste of death.
* * *
Back in Puritan Falls, Dwight Mitchum watched the psychic's body convulse.
"Miss Stansfield?" he cried, wanting to wake Jamie but afraid to touch her.
When she didn't come to, Dwight took his cell phone out of his pocket and called 911. By the time the paramedics arrived, however, Jamie was dead. After being questioned by the police and being cleared of any wrongdoing, Dwight Mitchum retrieved his mother's necklace and returned to Chicago.
Thankfully, he never learned of Mabel's unquestioning devotion to a madman or her death by her own hand: a bizarre suicide that also claimed the life of psychic Jamie Stansfield, who had only been along for the ride.
Salem, I don't know why your Godiva chocolates have a funny aftertaste. I certainly didn't put cyanide in your champagne truffles!
